A conference call is a commonplace tool of business. Typically, a conference call involves three or more people exchanging ideas with each other by telephone at two or more locations. Sometimes, the number of participants in a conference call is small and all of the participants can follow the conversation. Those participants of a conference call that are at the same location as a speaker can readily observe the nonverbal cues of the speaker in addition to the speaker's verbal cues. The participants of the conference call that are at a different location than the speaker cannot observe the speaker's nonverbal cues.
Indeed, a conference call can exhibit one or more of the following problems or disadvantages:                Difficulty in hearing non-collocated participants,        Difficulty on the part of remote participants or participants in one conference room to hear participants in another conference room,        Ambient noises (e.g., fan noise, rustling of papers, etc.) and echoes that cause further interference,        Audio from different, non-collocated participants being received at different volumes,        Phone numbers and other relevant information having to be entered by hand,        The need to physically manipulate the speakerphone to make adjustments,        Reliance on a paper record for a “complete” list of participants, and        Difficulty of identifying the participant who is speaking at any given moment by non-collocated participants.        
These problems can diminish the effectiveness of a conference call.